Monday night in Chicago was the kind of loss that makes a whole city reach for the antacids. The Philadelphia Eagles — 2-0, rolling, talking like a team with another deep January run in its bones — got dismantled 27-7 by the Bears and a 38-year-old third-string quarterback named Case Keenum, who hadn't started a game since Christmas Eve 2023. Jalen Hurts managed 153 passing yards, threw an interception, took a frightening sideline hit that sent him to the medical tent for a concussion check, and watched backup Andy Dalton throw an end-zone pick on the four plays he missed. The Eagles were shut out in the second half. On national television. It was, by every measure, the worst performance of the season. Good news: Sunday brings the 1-2 Rams to Lincoln Financial Field, and Jalen Hurts is 4-0 as a starter against Los Angeles. If there's a get-right game on the schedule, this is it.
The Bears loss was a cascade of everything going wrong at once. Caleb Williams' dislocated elbow and Tyson Bagent's concussion left Chicago starting Keenum, and Keenum responded with the game of his life — 24 of 34 for 247 yards, two touchdowns, and a diving score of his own. The Eagles' defense, which had been the backbone of the 2-0 start, got gashed through the air. Hurts took the late hit from linebacker D'Marco Jackson on the sideline, stayed down for a worrying moment, and was cleared to return — but the four plays he missed ended with Dalton's interception, a 14-point swing in a game Philadelphia lost by 20. "We weren't good enough tonight," Hurts said afterward. "I wasn't good enough." That's the accountability that made him the highest-paid player in franchise history and a Super Bowl MVP. Now comes the response — and Hurts has made a career of responding.
The first two weeks showed why the Eagles remain the class of the NFC East. Week 1 was a 24-22 survival against Washington. Week 2 was pure Hurts theater: in Nashville, with Saquon Barkley sidelined by a stinger suffered on the first play (four carries, nine yards, playing in a neck roll), Hurts dragged the Eagles back — surviving a 92-yard pick-six by Amani Hooker, getting a 58-yard field goal from Jake Elliott, and then finding Darius Cooper for a 3-yard touchdown with under ten seconds left to steal a 24-20 win from the Titans. That's the Hurts experience in miniature: the mistake, the composure, the walk-off answer. It's why Philadelphia gave him the keys to the franchise and why the city trusts him in the fourth quarter more than any quarterback since Donovan McNabb.
Sunday's matchup with the Rams is layered with history, and almost all of it favors Philadelphia. Hurts' four wins over Los Angeles: the 23-13 win in October 2023 (303 passing yards), the 37-20 rout that November, the 28-22 divisional-round classic in January 2025 that launched the Super Bowl run, and last September's 33-26 shootout in which Hurts accounted for four touchdowns. Sean McVay is 1-6 against the Eagles. The Rams have lost four straight in the series and ten of eleven since 2005. None of that guarantees anything — the 2026 Rams, with Matthew Stafford, Puka Nacua, Davante Adams and a returning Aaron Donald, are as talented as any team on Philadelphia's schedule — but the Eagles know exactly who they are against this opponent. Physical. Patient. Relentless in the fourth quarter.
That identity was forged in the franchise's golden era, which is still happening. The Eagles were founded in 1933 and spent most of their history as the league's great underachievers — the 1948 and 1949 championships with Steve Van Buren, the 1960 title, and then decades of heartbreak: the Buddy Ryan near-misses, the Andy Reid-Donovan McNabb years with five NFC Championship appearances and the Super Bowl XXXIX loss, the "Dream Team" debacle. Then Doug Pederson and backup quarterback Nick Foles authored the miracle — Super Bowl LII, the Philly Special, the 41-33 upset of the Patriots, the first Lombardi Trophy in franchise history, and a parade down Broad Street that the city had waited 57 years for. The encore took longer than hoped — the Super Bowl LVII loss to Kansas City in 2023 stung — but the 2024 season was the coronation: a dominant run through the playoffs, including that divisional win over the Rams, and a 40-22 demolition of the Chiefs in Super Bowl LIX. Hurts, the Super Bowl MVP, standing on the podium. Philadelphia, finally, wasn't the underdog anymore. It was the standard.
Last season's repeat bid fell short in January, and the roster turned over in the way championship rosters do — most notably A.J. Brown's departure to New England in free agency, which remade the receiver room around DeVonta Smith and the emerging Cooper. But the core remains elite: Hurts, Barkley (when healthy, the most dangerous back in football), Smith, Lane Johnson anchoring the line, a defense that was championship-caliber a year ago. Head coach Nick Sirianni, now in his sixth season, owns one of the highest winning percentages among active coaches — the emotional, chest-bumping leader who turned skeptics into believers by simply winning more than almost anyone.
The task now is simple and urgent: flush Chicago, beat the Rams, get to 3-1. The NFC East race won't wait — Washington and Dallas are both live — and the conference's top seed will likely run through the usual gauntlet of Detroit, Green Bay and Seattle. The Eagles' championship formula hasn't changed: Hurts' legs and the Brotherly Shove in short yardage, Barkley's explosiveness, a defensive front that ruins afternoons. Monday night was the outlier; two-plus years of evidence says so. But the NFL has a way of turning one bad night into a narrative, and the only cure is Sunday at the Linc, against a team this franchise owns, with a quarterback who always answers. Philly doesn't do panic. It does bounce-backs.
